ll right, that is IT! Prompted by a Facebook conversation today, I have decided to lay out my stance on an issue. After this, I will point people in the direction of this URL and they can, as they say, STFU.
In my job, I get a lot of very intelligent people who realize the system isn't working. I'm with you. The system isn'tworking. Once again, the rich are screwing the poor, and "equal opportunity" is nothing more than a delusion, "opiate for the masses." Something has to change, and quickly. I support the Occupy Movement. I support and attend protests. I am not at all inactive and I am definitely in the leftist camp.
But most of these people (many of whom are just out of high school or maybe college, if they finished before deciding that the whole school system is an indoctrination process, something I actually do agree with,) seem to think that the answer is for the power to fail, 2012 to explode the sun or crash Nibaru into the earth, or everyone to go back to homesteading in communes (they don't like the word "communes"; they've been trained by the media to fear communism, even though that's what they really want, so they call it "intentional communities governed by consensus” - same thing, do some reading. Either that, or they want to maintain the illusion that they are so witty and original, when their grandparents did this stuff in the 60's.) They want the economic system to collapse; they want the sky to fall.
I think, perhaps, you have not thought this through. And if you have, you are a selfish, fascist, elitist jerk with delusions of grandeur. Either that or you are a zealot and the sacrifice of your own life and the lives of innocents doesn’t bother you. Let me explain why.
Let's start with anything that causes the economic system to collapse. Sounds like a good plan when we all know the system is corrupt, right? But let's consider all the historic examples when it did. Let’s consider the situation in Germany after the First World War. The world decided that Germany was to blame for the war and they should be made to pay reparations to all the other participating nations. This led to people driving wheelbarrows filled with money down to the store to buy loaves of bread, of which there was a shortage. This desperate situation of economic scarcity, and the lack of compassion from the rest of the world, directly led to the rise of the National Socialist Party in the 30’s, with their message of German pride, economic success and focus on family (sound familiar?). Don’t believe me? Look it up; we live in the age of Google.
Not enough of an example? Let’s try the Great Depression. You’ve all heard about that, right? Desperate people hopping trains from town to town in an effort to find a paying job. Crops drying up in the Midwest and families migrating across the country with no food and no hope. All of them condemned as being “lazy Welfare bums” by the media.
You can go back through history and see numerous examples of major economic collapses. I found a great little site on“The Ten Great Financial Collapses in History.” In no case were they ever beneficial to anyone except tyrants, and in most cases they caused numerous wars, crises and political problems that carried well into future generations. Social evolution always takes a step backwards too (for example, in the wake of the economic collapse in Wales prior to its conquering by King Edward, Jewish moneylenders were blamed for the Welsh debt and they were forbidden to lend money and required to wear yellow hats to identify themselves; shades of the Holocaust, anyone? See above paragraph on the economic collapse of Germany.) Historically, the elderly, babies, the poor and the disabled are the first to die. So tell me exactly how this helps the cause of the 99%?
You think things would be different in an economic collapse today? Perhaps you have not been paying attention to what’s going on in Greece. The economic collapse of this important nation has already had terrible consequences in Greece and the greater ripples are only just being felt. Same pattern; the poor suffering, basic needs (medications as essential as Asprin) not being met, extremist political parties garnering unhealthy levels of support, people committing suicide out of desperation. The link is to a very good article by a sociologist; read it.
Now let’s talk about the power going off and society collapsing, because the two really do sort of go together in our modern age. If one happens, the other will too. So let’s ponder the lack of power first. You might have considered that hospitals will cease to function. Seems obvious; no life support systems, so all the very sick, wounded, the premature babies . . . all dead. You might be comfortable with that, viewing them as an unnatural burden on society anyway. That’s what makes you a fascist, because obviously you believe that the able-bodied are superior to the disabled and you believe that the disabled should die off and stop being a burden on our system.
I bet you haven’t considered the long-term implications of this though. For instance, have you realized that centrifuge machines will no longer work? Bye bye medical research! Ah, but maybe you’re one of those “we should all only be taking completely natural plants and no synthesized medications, and doctors are all corrupt and trying to poison us anyhow” types. Well, you’re screwed too. How are you going to get Chinese herbs when shipping and air travel have stopped? Oh, and don’t forget to cross your legs, ladies; that means that effective, reasonably certain birth control ceases to exist, so don’t have sex unless you want babies!
Provided, of course, that you can prevent men from raping you; a fairly typical response in war and social unrest. And that you can prevent people from stealing your stuff at gunpoint; also fairly common in anarchy. Loving everyone to death isn’t going to save you. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, no matter how many “positive thoughts” they generate. You want an idea of what this would be like? Read “The Stand” by Stephen King. The re-release, in which the text slashed from the original published version was restored. There’s a very poignant scene in which a group of women, some of whom are very strong athletic feminists, are kept as “pets” and repeatedly raped by a band of roving scuzzbags with guns, and another in which a very likeable character dies from simple appendicitis because nobody knows how to operate on him, though they do try.
Get ready to settle in somewhere, because before long there won’t be any roads, there won’t be any cars, and travel will be restricted to horseback and the pedmobile. Travelling from Vernon to Vancouver used to be a month or two trip by wagon train, depending on luck and the time of year. Currently it takes me four hours by the Coquilhalla Connector. I am sure the comparison is accurate everywhere.
If you don’t care about any of that, consider this: no refrigeration. So you can’t keep meat fresh (or most veggies) longer than a few days. Maybe you think you’re going to be a vegetarian. Be prepared to boil pine needle tea to avoid scurvy in the Canadian winter, because you won’t have oranges; you can’t grow them here. And remember how limited our growing season is, and that corn no longer grows without being planted by humans. You will not be able to make a complete protein without learning to hunt, especially in a famine year (and we’ll still have climate change to deal with in addition to natural cycles, so good luck!) so you can give up your vegan pretensions.
Oh, and I hope you like weaving. You’re going to have to do a lot of it. In pre-industrial cultures, women spent most of their time making clothing, even noblewomen, because it was an incredibly difficult and time-consuming process. First you had to harvest the fibres, then you had to spin the fibres, then you had to weave the fibres into fabric. Oh, and you need natural fibres, because most modern fibres require synthesized materials, so I hope you like cultivating worms, flax or sheep (or something similar.) And I hope you have no allergies (I do!)
Let’s consider, too, that chopping wood takes hard work. There are lots of great alternative power sources and you can make them work, but the fallback is wood heat, and you need to be able to wield an axe and a chainsaw – as long as you have fuel for the chainsaw, of course. Neither is physically easy. Eventually you will get too old or too broken to do it. Oh yes, and if you have allergies to smoke, you won’t be able to live in a house heated with wood for long.
I also hope you like famine and illness, because the “all natural” method of farming was subject to climate and crop failure. It’s definitely an all-natural method of population control. I hope you don’t think you’re exempt from death. Nature will kill you just as cheerfully as anyone else. Malnourished people who aren’t receiving exactly the proper nutrients not only can die from this, but they are more subject to anything that goes around. And there are numerous illnesses caused by bacteria that are hellishly dangerous without antibiotics; which, of course, will no longer exist. See how seriously you take pneumonia. I had pneumonia one year when my gas heat was cut off and my old house was heated strictly with space heaters and my oven. It took two months for me to recover, and I was taking antibiotics, but I am allergic to penicillin. Your sensitive child with the multiple allergies will die of a bee-sting or be sick all the time from eating gluten, lactose or eggs, none of which will be avoidable in a diet suited to our climate.
If you are healthy enough to actually live off the grid, or if you are already doing so, I really wish you all the best and I am glad for you. But not everyone can, and if you support the cause of the 99% and you are genuinely interested in the well-being of all of us, then just remember that. The complete destruction of society is not the answer.
And I have to ask; why are you waiting passively for some Act of God to save you from the big bad corporations anyway? Why do you not have the courage to handle the situation yourself? We say “we hate society.” Well, I hate to break this to you, my friend, but we ARE “society.” Take back your power and DO SOMETHING!
If you really want to make changes, I have some practical suggestions. To start with, why don’t you VOTE? I hear so many young people professing their hip contempt for the entire system and their refusal to actually know what the hell they are talking about since “all politicians are crooks.” Well, did you know that about only about 30% of Canada’s eligible voters actually voted in the last federal election? Then we wonder how Harper got elected, when none of us voted for him. Well, none of us voted; that’s how! You can bet your butt that Harper’s camp of crusty old rednecks did! Why don’t you go to the polls and get rid of him? Tell your friends to do the same! People die for the right to vote every year, and you have “hip contempt.” You need a proctologist to find your head. You’re right, the system does not currently reflect the will of the voters accurately because it is not suitably representative of our population, and when a party has a scattered constituency, many of our votes are wasted. Not to mention the whole Robocalls garbage. That needs to be changed; but BC managed to unite behind getting rid of the HST, so I know it’s still possible, though difficult, to make things happen in the current system. We just need to take the threat of the co-opting of our democracy as seriously as we do the threat of raised taxes!
If you’re reading this and you’re in the US, I urge you to get behind the newly-introduced (as of Feb. 11, 2013) “We the People” Amendment, which will, if passed, amend the US Constitution to clarify that constitutional rights apply only to individuals, not fictionally-created entities such as corporations (and those of you who want separation of church and state, consider this: in order to be a non-profit organization, a group must first have qualified as a for-profit corporation, so it applies to them too); and clarify that campaign donations by corporations are not a right protected by “free speech.” Here’s your chance to really change what’s going on in your country, and by your example, the world! These amendments would change everything, so please, contact the contacts given in the link, write letters, hold protests, demand referendums, and above all, spread the word to everyone you can!
Another thing that you can do is to hold protests. Get everyone you know to participate. Get everyone they know to participate. The Canadian government was unable to ignore the student protests in Montreal against tuition raises, because there were simply too many people. They stopped traffic for hours in the downtown district of a major world city. This, despite the fact that prior to this, the Canadian government had outlawed such protests!
And that’s another thing you can do. Organize large-scale acts of civil disobedience. Participate in protests, because in North America, you are guaranteed the right of free speech and freedom of assembly, no matter what your government says. Consider what the Canadian government would do if 100 000 people simply refused to pay their income tax because we didn’t like how they were spending our money, and we withheld it until a government that spent it wisely came to power? They couldn’t arrest everyone . . .
Write letters and sign petitions. Support causes you believe in. And vote with your dollars. Support the 100 Mile Diet, don’t shop at the big box stores like Wal-Mart, and try to buy organic and cruelty-free as much as your budget allows. I’m not rich enough to buy everything organic either, but I do my best, and I do my best to buy local. I do this even in my stock purchases for my shop; I support local craftspeople before corporations, Okanagan before the rest of Canada, and Canada before the rest of the world. “The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” – Abraham Lincoln.
The Conservative Party in Canada has been found in contempt of Parliament and has unlawfully influenced our democratic process. Why do we still allow these people to govern us? Why have we not impeached them already?Iceland did it; why not us? Because we are cowards, that’s why; passively waiting for the next end-of-the-world prophecy to equalize the playing field. Nothing’s going to do that. We have to do it for ourselves.
WE are society. If we refuse, together, to participate in this crazy system, the system will have no choice but to reform. These jerks only govern with our consent. They would do well to remember that. And so would we.
Blessed be,
Well put Sable
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